Fine wires are used in the semi-conductor and electronics industries, for example for wire bonding and it is important to ensure that the wire used has adequate tensile strength, otherwise there is a substantial risk that wires will break during manufacture of components or in their use, leading to circuit failures. Also in the electronics industry, electronic components are often packaged in pockets in plastics or cardboard tapes, being retained in the pockets by a cover tape bonded to the pocketed tape by a suitable adhesive, for example a hot melt adhesive, which is such as to allow the cover tape to be peeled off so that the components can be removed from the pockets. In order to ensure that machines using the tape-packaged components function satisfactorily, it is necessary to check the peel force needed to remove the tape, to ensure that the tape will be cleanly peeled off during use.
Currently available testing machines are unsatisfactory for both of these purposes in that most testing machines which are generally suitable for use for the above described purposes are designed to cope with a very wide range of loadings which makes them unacceptably expensive for the purpose of merely testing fine wire or the peel force required to peel the cover tape off tape-packaged electronic components (the loadings in both instances being of the same order). Furthermore, many known machines are, in general, too slow and inconvenient in operation to be useful for the purposes discussed above.